84 THE DESCENT OP MAN. 



offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language, for all 

 the members of the same species utter the same instinctive cries 

 expressive of their emotions; and all the kinds which sing, exert 

 their power Instinctively; but the actual song, and even the call 

 notes, are learnt from their parents or foster-parents. These 

 sounds, as Daines Barrington" has proved, "are no more innate 

 "than language is in man." The first attempts to sing "may be 

 "compared to the imperfect endeavor in a child to babble." The 

 young males continue practicing, or as the bird-catchers say, 

 "recording," for ten or eleven months. Their first essays show 

 hardly a rudiment of the future song; but as they grow. older 

 we can perceive what they are aiming at; and at last they are 

 said "to sing their song round." Nestlings which have learnt the 

 song of a distinct species, as with the canary-birds educated In the 

 Tyrol, teach and transmit their new song to their offspring. The 

 slight natural differences of song In the same species inhabiting 

 different districts may be appositely compared, as Harrington 

 remarks, "to provincial dialects;" and the songs are allied, though 

 distinct species may be compared with the languages of distinct 

 races of man. I have given the foregoing details to show that 

 an instinctive tendency to acquire an art is not peculiar to man. 



With respect to the origin of articulate language, after having 

 read on the one side the highly interesting works of Mr. Hens- 

 leigh Wedgwood, the Rev. P. Farrar, and Prof. Schleicher,''^ and 

 the celebrated lectures of Prof. Max Miiller on the other side, I 

 cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and 

 modification of various natural sounds, the voices of other ani- 

 mals, and man's own instinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures. 

 When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, 

 or rather some early progenitor of man, probably first used his 

 voice in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing, as 

 do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day; and we may con- 

 clude from a widely-spread analogy, that this power would have 

 been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, — would 

 have expressed various emotions, such as love, jealousy, triumph, 

 — and would have served as a challenge to rivals. It is, therefore, 



"soiously; consciously as regards the Immediate end to be attained; 

 "unconscioLisly as regards the further consequences of the act." 



" Hon. Daines Barrington in 'Philosoph. Transactions,' 1773, p. 262. 

 See also Bureau de la Malle, in 'Ann. des. So. Nat.' 3rd series, Zoolo^. 

 tom. X. p. 119. 



» 'On the Origin of Language,' by H. Wedgwood, 1866. 'Chapters on 

 Language,' by the Rev. F. "W. Farrar, 1865. These works are most in- 

 teresting. See also 'De la Phys. et de Parole' par Albert Lemoine, 186^, 

 p. 190. The work on this subject, by the late Prof. Aug. Schleicher, 

 has been translated by Dr. Bikkers into English, under the title of 

 'Darwinism tested by the Science of Language,' 1869. 



